


Change is Hard (and Harder, so much Harder)

by Dogtagsandsmut



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bisexuality, Body Dysphoria, Dubious Consent, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Genderbent Steve Rogers, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Marriage, Other, Outing, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pretending to Be Gay, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Trans Character, dubcon or noncon outing, non consentual ftm, non-con ftm, trying to be gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-25 08:02:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2614352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dogtagsandsmut/pseuds/Dogtagsandsmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stella steps out of the vitaray chamber. Cheers immediately die, and everyone in the room looks shocked. She steps off the platform, center of gravity all wrong. “H-how do you feel?” Peggy chokes out. “Bigger,” Stella says, and oh shit, that’s not her voice. She opens her eyes, looks down. Her breasts are gone. Those aren’t her feet. She strips off her shirt. That’s a man’s chest. She yanks the belt out of her trousers. Pulls them out a bit from, Christ, from her pecs to take a peek. That’s a. Oh my God. That’s a man’s johnson. She looks up at Dr. Erskine, terrified, who stares back, head shaking in disbelief. Everyone in the room looks shell shocked. </p><p>Oh, God. Bucky. What is Bucky going to think?</p><p>“My husband is going to kill me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mysterious as the Dark Side of the Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stoatsandwich](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoatsandwich/gifts).



> With permission from stoatsandwich. "In my head, this is the fic where Stephanie Barnes comes out of the VitaRay machine looking like, well, Captain America, and Bucky has to figure out how to deal with that. I really want someone who isn’t me to write it." 
> 
> The name was changed to Stella make it more historically accurate, but the prompt she wrote is the same (and can be read in italics in the first part, sans one line I changed in order to fit with what I had already written. Thank you for this prompt, and permission to use it! It has bitten me on the ass and I am full of assy ideas now. Go read stoat's tumblr propts and ficlets too; she is the good idea fairy.

_For a minute you actually think you’re being rescued._

_He’s not in uniform, but he’s not dressed like the Hydra guards either. He knows your name. He rips the restraints off the table, shifting to move by your head._

_“Bucky,” he says, and he sounds like he’s trying not to cry. You can’t make out his face too well, because it’s dark and something funny is going on with your head, but you’re pretty sure you don’t know him. “I thought you were dead,” he whispers._

_“Who,” you rasp. “Who the hell are you.”_

_“Steve,” the strange man says. “I – Buck, it’s Steve.”_

_You have, after all, been raving. They speak English. It’s only natural that they would have assumed. They don’t know it started out as a joke about skinned knees and split lips. How could they? All they know is the name you call when it hurts too much._

_“Nice try, you Nazi piece of shit.” You’re reeling but you shove him away as hard as you can. “Steve’s my wife.”_

“I know, Buck. There was an experiment. It’s a long story, I can tell you later but first, we need to go. Now.”

“I’m not buying it, fucker. Get your hands off me.”

“Bucky, listen, please.” You try to focus on him, but you can’t get yours eyes to work right. He looks desperate from what you can make out. “That’s gunfire, do you hear? I gotta get you outta here, lemme help you.”

“I’ll take my chances, thanks. Fuck _off._ ” But as you move to slide off the table, your legs go out and you land _hard_ on one knee. Pain shoots through your kneecap, up your leg and all the way to behind your eyeball. He rushes over and tries to help, but you fight him off. Weakly, so weak.

“Cut it out. I’m not going nowhere with you.”

He sighs, and looks at you mournfully. Then raising the thing he’s got on his arm _(is that a shield?!)_ he starts to arch it down towards you. You try to throw a hand up to protect yourself, but your body just won’t listen, and the last thing you see before he brings it down onto your head is a pair of _very_ familiar blue eyes.

Then you drift, and all you know is darkness.

______________________________________________________________

Maybe you should back up a bit.

The first time you see her she’s getting her ass handed to her by a couple of the neighborhood bullies, on her side in a puddle, curled around something you can’t make out. They’re putting their boots to her, and you don’t know if she even _is_ a she, but what you do know is that she’s skin and bones and the breaths she’s taking, the broken struggle for air, do not sound good. She won’t survive if you just walk away and let this carry on.

You charge in, fists flying. You catch the biggest one with an uppercut to the jaw and he drops like a sack of potatoes.

The second one you kick in the stomach, hard, let _him_ have a taste of his own medicine, and the third takes off running. You help the runt on the ground to her feet.

“Thanks,” she wheezes, holding the thing that you can now see is a wailing, squirming kitten, to her flat bony chest.

“That yours?” You nod to it, and she shakes her head.

“Just some kitten. These clods here were tryna kill it. Couldn’t let that happen.” And yep, that voice definitely belongs to a girl, but none you ever seen before. Her hair is short and she’s wearing trousers. And suspenders. _Good Lord._ You shake your head.

“C’mon, my place ain’t far. We need to get those ribs looked at.”

“Ma’s a nurse,” she says, and okay, but is she even gonna make it back to her place in this shape?

“Lemme walk ya.” She looks at you real suspicious, but you figure she must see something she likes because after a moment her expression clears, and she nods. She makes her way down the alley, glancing back at the boys on the ground. They won’t be going nowhere for a while.

She crosses the street, limping, shrugs off the arm you offer, because you may be poor but your mother raised you right and taught you how to treat a dame. Girl. Whatever. Either way the girl doesn’t go for it. Once she makes it over to the other side, she half kneels, half crumples to the curb, and you rush over, but she’s just letting the kitten down to dash to the stoop of the nearest brownstone where its anxious momma cat is pacing. Swell.

“Good deed done. Now lets get you patched up. Your breathing’s all off.”

“Asthma. Stella.” She holds out a hand, but you shake it, rather than kiss it. She seems to like that.

“James. Call me Bucky. You don’t look like no Stella.”

“Oh yeah?” She’s wearing a small smile. You grin back.

“Yeah. Knobby knees. No curves. Split lip. You look like a boy. You look like a Steve.”

She smirks. “Yeah. Well. I’ll grow curves. You’ll be stuck looking like a punk though, wager.”

 _Oh yeah,_ you think. _I’m keeping this one._

 


	2. Say yes, say yes, cuz I need to know

When you come to, you’re laying on your back with what feels like the worst hangover of you life and  _that asshole_ standing over you, worried expression on his big dumb face. You glance around, groaning, see tree tops, see snow. You’re out of that hellhole. That’s something.

“Buck?”

“Erngh.”

“Can you walk? We need to regroup with the rest of the men.”

“Who _are_ you?”

“Captain Stella Barnes. Your wife.” He holds out a hand to help you up. You ignore it in favor of pushing yourself sitting, and the world swims when you try to stand, so you resentfully grab hold after all.

“You’re not my wife.”

He grimaces. “I swear I am. You saved me from bullies my whole life. You were my first kiss. You proposed with a ring that took you six years to save for.”

“I was _rambling_ , Nazi. Who knows what I said,” you snipe back, trying to stay steady on unsteady legs.

“I have it.”

“What.” You glance back at him, and he’s rustling through his uniform tunic, reaching for something. He pulls out his dog tags, and holds them out to you with an open, vulnerable face. Same expression Stevie makes sometimes. You take them with extreme reluctance, and read what they say.

Stella G Barnes

0-462368 T42 43 0

James B Barnes

150th St E 103B

Brooklyn NY USA

 

That’s her name. That’s your name. That your home of record. But dogtags can be faked.

The ring you put on her finger, however, hanging next to the top level tag—that can’t be faked. That's the ring you bought her. These bastards have your wife somehow. Somehow. It’s the only thing that makes sense. You _have_ to make it make sense. She’s not safe at home—they have her, she’s possibly injured, possibly dead.

You fly into a rage, finding strength where there was none before. You throw yourself at the man, catching him by surprise. You bounce right off his chest and he doesn’t even move and that infuriates you even more so you take a swing at his jaw. He doesn’t even lift his arms to defend himself. You punch him, again, and again, and again, but he doesn’t hit back. He just stands there, getting bloodied up, tears in his eyes.

“You killed her! You bastards KILLED MY WIFE! FUCKING FIGHT ME!”

He shakes his head, keeps taking the blows to the face. “I’m not gonna fight you, Buck. I’m with ya till the end of the line.”

The anger drains out of you. Your last blow ends with you leaning on one arm across his chest. “How could you know that? How could you know she said that? Did you torture her? Did she tell you that?”

“Bucky, think. How could they have captured your wife? Why? There were hundreds of POWs there. Why yours? Look at me. Please, I’m begging you.”

You look at him. He has her eyes. He has her lips. Her nose. Her brows. But like the features were snatched from her and stuck on the head of a man’s. A man with a busted lip and blooming black eye. Oh God. What if it’s true, and you just beat her to hell? “What did they do to you, Stevie?” you choke out. The amount of relief that floods his face at your words cements the feeling that’s been growing in you ever since you saw the ring.

“You know I’ve been trying to do my part. They. They gave me a chance.”

No. Not this, anything but this. Nonononono

* * *

The nickname sticks. Within a year, even her mom calls her Steve.  Her teachers have picked up on it as well. Some of them even think it’s her real name until they see the rosters. You’re pleased.

You stick around too, and you end up doing everything together. You know you’re pretty much all she has besides her mom—you’re her only friend. But rather than be smug about that, you treat it like a responsibility. She doesn’t money, her health, or a support system in a large family. You’ve got both parents, a sister. Your father’s business has become much more successful so your family has money, finally, and you try to give her what her mother can’t. You want to protect her. Feed her up. Buy her nice things, when you can manage it. Back her up when she picks fights, and boys think she’s hysterical and deem it necessary to “put her in her place”. You try to keep her as healthy as you can. You’re not always successful.

Right around her 14th birthday she gets real sick. The doctors don’t think she’ll pull through. You sit by her bed, wiping the sweaty hair off her forehead, feeding her broth by hand and listening to her wheeze. Trying to make her laugh. Helping her get to sleep. When her threadbare blanket didn’t keep her warm enough and her thin pillow can't sit her up enough to breathe, you pile into her bed behind her, pulling her to your chest and propping her up. It’s completely inappropriate, unseemly, for a boy and girl to lay in such a way, but her mother doesn’t even blink when she comes in with a bed warmer and sees you both. She’s known you for too long, and the twinkle in her eyes suggests that she knows you’ve been saving your pennies for a ring since you were ten.  You’re gonna ask her when she turns 17—you’ll be 16 but you don’t think your parents will protest too loudly.

If she lives that long.

And you’re terrified. You’re so scared she’s not going to make it. Every hard won breath is a struggle for her but a relief for you because that means she’s still _breathing_. Until you wake up one night, five days into her fever, to silence. You start screaming for her ma, who comes rushing in.

“She’s not breathing, she’s not breathing, she just stopped!” Mrs. Rogers rushes over to you, grabs Steve and starts shaking her. Her lips are blue.

“Save her, you have to save her!” You’re in full blown panic mode, but Mrs. Rogers is a nurse, so thankfully she’s got a level head. She pinches Steve’s nose close and seals her mouth over the girl’s. She breathes into her. You’re shaking as you hug Steve from behind. How long has it been since she stopped breathing? How could you fall asleep like that; you were the one who was supposed to protect her. What if she’s…

You feel Steve’s chest shudder. Is she breathing?

“Is she breathing? Is she breathing?” Mrs. Rogers shakes her head, continues to breathe into her daughter. You fight back tears. She’s dead. She’s dead and you never told her…

Steve’s whole body tenses, and then she takes one labored breath. And then another. And another.  Oh God.

You release the tears that have been gathering without permission. Now they’re of relief. It’s okay to shed a few. You rock Steve back and forth, burying your face in her neck, trying to breathe her scent in, rubbing her arms to get some warmth back into them. She continues gasping as Mrs. Rogers whispers encouragement. The nurse is openly sobbing with relief.

Steve coughs. “What did I miss?”

* * *

“Did it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Is it permanent?”

“So far.”

You look at her, wrecked. She doesn’t look back, just keeps walking through the woods, trudging along, but her mouth gets a pinched look so she knows he’s looking at her. Him. Fuck.

“Did you know? Did you know it was gonna do this to your body, Stevie? What the hell?”

She stops then, turns to you. You have to crane your neck to look up at her. Him. Shit. She, he, looks agast. “Of _course_ I didn’t know. Nobody knew. Everyone was as shocked as I was. And it hasn’t been particularly easy on me, Bucky. I’m not right in this body, it’s all wrong.”

“You think?!” You scream. Above you, birds take off their branches. She puts a hand over your mouth, pressing your back to a tree.

“Buck! Shut up, idiot, we’re still in enemy territory. You’ll give our position away!” Your wife, giving orders,  giving tactical advice. You hate it, it’s _wrong._ She’s right though. She was always the clever one when it came to this. Not when it came to herself, but protecting others? You take a deep breath and she takes her giant freaking hand off your mouth.

“You played around with science, Steve. What the fuck did you think was gonna happen? What did you hope was gonna happen? That you were gonna get a body to fit yer nickname? That they were just gonna start letting women into the corps? What the hell was going through your head when you let them pump you full of experimental drugs?”

“I was dying, Bucky. Understand, it was my last chance.”

“Make me understand, Steve. Because right now I don’t.”

“Fine. But keep walking.” She lets you off the tree, pulls a compass out and presses it to his cheek. Hers. Whatever. “The chance was to join the Nurse Corps. They were taking men for some experimental procedure—super serum, vitarays—they wanted nurses to match. Gotta keep up with the boys you’re treating, right?” He drops the compass, squints to get his line of sight. Starts walking. You follow him. Her. You really gotta work on that.

“Except the week before the first test, I got sick, bad. I wasn’t gonna bounce back this time. And you weren’t there, Buck, and they couldn’t get ahold of you. And rather than go with the alternate chosen, and let me die, well. The doctor, Erskine. He convinced them to run me as the first test subject, instead of the soldier that got chose. Told them that if I died anyway, they could run more tests, maybe work out the kinks before putting a male through it.

“Nobody expected me to live. Hell, I didn’t expect to live. But I wasn’t going to give up, not even a second, if I thought there was even a chance I could see you again, alive. So I did it. And they were shocked. I saw all kinds of specialists, trying to figure out what went wrong, what happened. How to fix it. I flew all over to get poked and prodded by the world’s smartest—Chicago, DC, Paris, London, Salerno—that’s how I found out you were missing. And I had to come get you. Get you out. All this, everything that happened to me, I could make it worth it if I saved you.” Steve stops walking then, turns to you. Looks at you with hope, and wonder, and relief. “And I did. You’re alive, you’re safe. I saved you for once, ain’t that a marvel?”

“Yeah,” you grunt, and her smile slides off her face. “Real marvel. C’mon. Let’s meet up with the others and get the hell outta here.”

* * *

“Marry me.”

Steve makes a face at you, “Bucky, no.”

“Whaaaaaat?” You’re at a ball game. She’s just turned 17 and you got her tickets to see the Mets vs the Dodgers and you’ve got the ring in your pocket. You know she thinks you’re playing, but you’ve been planning this for years.

Steve’s never thought she was good enough for you. Still thinks it. She’s always been a little unnerved by the amount of attention you get from the dames, always comparing herself to them and coming up short but to you, she’s perfect. She’s your whole world and everything you want in a woman. She’s sassy, she’s bold, she’s uncompromising in her morals and she’s smart as hell. You’re positive that you’re gonna love her for the rest of your life. If you can just convince her to be your wife. You turn up the charm.

“C’mon, Stevie it’ll be great. You and me. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Say yes.”

She takes another bite of the hot dog she’s holding, stares out into the fields. She swallows then looks back at you. “Are you joking?”

“It’ll be fun! We can get a place down on 150th, like we talked about; I can work at the docks, you can get a job at the library, we can try for kids—“

“What if I don’t want kids?”

“Then we’ll get a dog. I don't care, just marry me.” She pulls another face.

“Bucky, we’re too young. You’re sixteen. What will your parents say? What will mom think?”

“What, you think they don’t know? They’re not stupid, they see the way I look at you. Who else is it gonna be?”

“I dunno, Buck, anyone? Anyone else but me? Literally any dame that you can hold without being afraid you might step on?” She looks down at herself, sighs, but you reach out a hand and pluck her head off her chest, gently nudging her to look you in the eye.

“Hey. Don’t do that. If you’re about to make another disparaging comment about my best gal’s looks I’m gonna knock you outta your seat.” You drop the humor, all seriousness now. “I don’t care about those other dames. Never have. I just wanna be with you. You hang the sun as far as I’m concerned.”

She gazes at you, wholesome, and your stomach does a flip-flop. “Say yes, please say yes, Stevie.” You pull out the ring you’ve had stashed in your pocket since this morning, and go down on one knee in the narrow margin in front of your chairs. “Stella Grace Rogers—“

“Don’t call me that.” But she’s smiling now and you think your chances might be looking up,

“—will you take this ring—“

“So cheesy, Buck, really.”

“—And be my blushing, wheezing, stubborn, punk of a bride.” You wait. She’s smirking at you now, eyes deep. Slowly she holds up her ring hand. You slide it on, relieved you got the size right.

“You’re gonna regret this.”

“Nah.” You lean in for a kiss, which she gives you, grinning into it, before pulling back and mashing what’s left of the dog in your face.

“Hey!”

“Toldja. Jerk.”


	3. Her placeholder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Strip down, Stevie, and show me your body. I wanna see it. What did the American tax payers buy with their hard-earned money, anyway,” you bitterly demand.
> 
> “Bucky.” His voice is full of reprimand—hers—but you’re beyond caring. You wish you had a flask of white lightning with you. You’re not sure if any amount of booze is going to prepare you for this.

“Lemme see it.”

“What?”

You’re sitting in Steve’s tiny canvas tent, back at the TOC. It’s not much, but it’s more than the junior enlisted men get, and as her (apparent) NCO component, her second in command on the enlisted side, you get your own tiny cot to go in it. You’re gonna be the 1st Sergeant of her company of men, the brass say. Reward for your assistance of the illustrious Captain America in his rescue mission. At the tender rank of E5 you’re going to occupy an E8 slot. Ain’t war hell.

The entire idea is wholly unappealing to you. You didn’t want to be responsible for a squad of 8 men—now you’re in charge of the life or death of 120 of them? Hell, you didn’t even want to fight in this war. If you hadn’t been drafted, youda stayed home to be with your wife. Your female wife. Your female wife who’s now out here, with you, serving alongside you in a borrowed body as your Commanding Officer. In a too-cramped, canvas tent.

Your head hurts.

“Strip down, Stevie, and show me your body. I wanna see it. What did the American tax payers buy with their hard-earned money, anyway,” you bitterly demand.

“Bucky.” His voice is full of reprimand—hers—but you’re beyond caring. You wish you had a flask of white lightning with you. You’re not sure if any amount of booze is going to prepare you for this.

He turns to you from where he— _she,_ stands in front of her own cot. Her uniform, the overcoat, everything is ripped to shreds, giving hints to the shape of her body. They fail to evoke any erotic or emotional response in you because it hasn’t sunk in—not even close. What your eyes perceive is just another male—a stranger at that—standing in front of you, torn to hell. It hasn’t sunk in that you wife is buried in there. Maybe this will help though.

It won't.

Steve strips down slowly. He unzips the front of his jacket, undoing the buckles at his wrists with downcast but not unconfident eyes. If anything, he’s trying to be coy. Seductive. But that’s all wrong. _She_ lets the jacket fall off her back, pooling at her feet as she looks up at you. You see the challenge there. Of course there’s challenge; it’s Steve. She’s daring you to keep looking. Daring you to take a chance on this new, rebuilt her.

Fine. Game on.

She sheds the top part of her uniform, a gaudy, colorful number that draws the eyes to the parts of her most vulnerable to live fire. Her chest and arms are ripped. Ignoring the abrasions, her musculature is perfect; cut. Her pectorals are huge. Her biceps are as big around as your thighs. You can’t see the back of her, but you know it’s as dense and defined as the front. Gone are the days when you could count her ribs. Now you can slide a penny in her Adonis lines and it wouldn’t go nowhere. Her collarbones, once so sharp you could use them to shave, now carry meat on them. Sinew.

Her body is the picture of perfect masculine physique. Your johnson doesn’t event stir.

 She waits, thumbs tucked in her waistband, elbows out, hips facing you like a goddamned comic book character, daring you. Waiting.

“Whadderya waiting for, an invite? All off. Wanna see you naked. Wanna see,” and your throat clicks, slams tight shut, but you push on, shove the words through your constricted larynex. “Wanna see your johnson.”

It took you a lot of soul searching and planning and discarding and planning again to even get to this part. You know you love Steve. As you live and breathe, you love her, and you will love her. You will continue to love Stella “Steve” Barnes if she were blue, or had no legs, or were a potato; you will love her. It’s why you married her. But marriage comes with some stipulations. And you don’t know if you’ll be able to ever…do it. With her. Like this. But you’d bet your left arm she’s got as healthy a sex drive in this new body as anyone else. If not more so.

So you figure, an experiment. Stevie’s worth that. She’s worth years and years more than that. And you figure, who’s gonna persecute you, right? After all, the government’s the one that turned your gal into a guy. They forced you both to become fairies. They can't send you to jail for acting as man and wife do. Even if it’s man and husband. And if you find you don’t like it but you have to choke down your disgust and sleep with her anyways for years and years forthcoming, you can do that. Plenty of fellas do it, right, with dames that get fat or ugly? This is…well, it’s different, but the same as well. So you can. Unless you can’t.

In which case, you can live in a sexless marriage. Plenty of fellas do that too. Except. You’re both so young. You got married when you were teens—young teens. You’re not much older now. And you got a whole lot of life in front of you. _If you make it through the war._ And you try to picture the rest of your life, the _rest of your life_ , denied physical closeness with Steve, closeness that fed you as much as oxygen or food did. Sharing beds for warmth and for comfort also, leaning into each other when going to the pictures—arms and hands clutched during ball games. Holding her to your chest as she coughed and wheezed. You need that. You both need that. And you can’t imagine having that, without it sometimes, often times, turning deeper, more intimate, both of you silently pleading for _closer_ , for you to slip into her and seat yourself inside her. How could that not lead to sex, sometimes?

So you picture divorce. Endless years and years of your soul cleaved in half, the colors melted from your world, and you alone, struggling to find a way to breathe, constantly feeling like there’s not enough oxygen in the air and her alone, with no allies or anyone to look out and take care of her—no. No, no, you won’t. You _won’t._

So that leaves two options: figure out how to exist in the state you’re in…have fairy sex with the manliest man that ever was, and like it. Or become nothing more than best friends again. Revert from closer to friends, to just friends. The kind of friend you can hold, and share a bed with maybe, sometimes, and be comfortable with touching. But nothing more.

The ideas make you sick. But they’re the only solutions you come up with.

“Take your pants off. Pull your johnson out, Stevie, and lemme look at it.” And looking utterly and totally devastated, she does.

* * *

You know you’re gonna be in loads of trouble when she gets home, but you can’t bring yourself to care. She’s gonna be so sore at you for getting loaded, but you needed this.

You’re drinking when she comes home from her shift at the library, and you glance up from where you lounge at her desk, feet up. She’s so beautiful, you think, and she comes breezing in in a skirt and one of your white button pulldowns from when you were a teen. Fits her better, now, but she still kinda swims in it.

She’s grown her hair out a little, enough to pull it into a ponytail that she’s got sweeped over a shoulder, and it’s short enough that some of the strands are slipping out, and in your drunken state, you think, lovely.

You’ve been married for almost nine years. But you’re barely 25. You’re still so hot for her.

She wrinkles her face as she sets her bag and sketchbook down on the desk, pointedly moving your feet off the latest sketch she were working on.

“Hey, Buck,” she says, concern coloring her voice as she leans in for a kiss. You pucker up but she veers off as soon as she gets close enough to smell the corn whiskey on your breath.

“Really, Buck? Not even 5 PM and you’re…the hell’s wrong with you?”

You roll your eyes, tugging her gently into her lap and cuddling into her. Despite how much you’ve been drinking you are painfully, painfully sober, and you just need to feel her for a bit, breathe her in. If she thinks she’s sore now, wait until she hears what you have to tell her.

“You ever think about just maybe running away, Stevie? Just you and me, we could leave this shitty apartment and this stuff that don’t mean nothing to us and just go, just you and I?”

She sighs, stops trying to squirm out of your grasp. “What’re you on about now?”

“I dunno,” you whine, “just feeling maudlin. Sometimes I just wish the whole world would disappear. Or maybe stop for a while, ‘cept for you and I. And we could walk around, everybody else frozen in time, and we could pluck the apples from their hands, and skip the lines they make at the grocers and just take what we needed, and go travel and see all the places you read in your book and nobody’d bother us ‘cuz they’d be nonethewiser. Don’t you wish that sometimes?”

“Sometimes,” she sighs, leaning into you a bit, “and then I remember we got responsibilities and bills to pay, and rent. And there’s a war going on. And I think about how we all have to do our part. There’s a war on, Buck.”

You bark out a laugh. “War,” you declare, but it comes out ugly and broken and twisted. “Stevie, Stevie look at me, look at me doll." And she looks back and down at you, still concerned. “You’re the most precious thing to me in the world. I love you, I love you so much, ever since the first moment I saw you. And all I want is to keep you safe, baby, that’s all I’ve ever wanted, but I, oh god. Stevie.”

She looks worried now, face pale. Her whole body is still. “Bucky, what’s wrong? What happened?”

You point to the desk, eyelids clenched tight against the tears you’ve been trying to hold back all day about the thought of leaving her, of going away. You point at the envelope and the letter that sits on top and her breath hitches as she instantly knows.

 

ORDER TO REPORT FOR ARMED FORCES PHYSICAL EXAMINATION

 

She’s real quiet for a long time. Then finally, “Where’s the bottle?” You reach an arm down, snag it from beneath your chair. You hold it out, prying your eyes open. Her face swims in your vision as she plucks it out of your hand and takes a long hard pull, throat moving with her gulps. She coughs a bit and wipes her mouth, then lays her head down in the crook of your neck, going limp.

“Tomorrow,” she breathes, “I’ll go down to the recruiting station on 10th and I’ll sign up for the nursing corps. You can go with me. If we file as husband and wife they can’t break us up, I can follow you, I can follow you,”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, Stevie, absolutely not. Not a chance. I can’t let you, _I can’t._ I need you here; need you safe. I can’t keep myself alive out there without knowing you’re safe. I can’t let anything happen to you; would die if something happened and it was because I dragged you behind me into war. Stay here.”

You look at her. She’s got tears streaming down her face, but there’s a hard look in her eyes, and you know she’s not going to budge on the issue. You look right back at her. “Don’t. Try.”

“Can’t stop me.”

“Like hell I can’t, you’re my wife.”

“And you’re my husband. And you’re not going to go fight a war without my being there, right by your side, treating your wounds.” She takes another long pull of the bottle, then leans down and shoves her tongue down your throat. In an instant you’re up out of the chair, hands under her hips as you stumble your way through the apartment and into the bedroom. You throw her down on the bed, ripping your clothes off as she shimmies out of hers. And as you fuck up into her, her body arching and grinding onto your wood, mouth sealed tight to yours, you think, _what the hell; it’ll be fine. She’ll be here, she’ll be safe. They’re_ never _gonna take her in the Corps anyway._

* * *

Her johnson’s bigger than yours. It’s thicker than yours too, jutting from her body, curved slightly. You can see the tip of her dick head poking out of its sweater. She’s firm, which surprises you. How could anyone get firm under these circumstances. But she is, which means its pointing straight at your face, because she’s standing in front of the cot you sit on.

As always, Steve reads your mind. “Not a competition, Buck.”

“I know that,” you snipe back, inexplicably agitated. Or, the agitation makes sense, don’t it? You slowly reach out both hands and rest them softly on her hips. If they were flat plans before, made so by lack of food and sickness, they’re even flatter now, but they’re the picture of health. You tentatively slide you hand around to cup her left ass cheek, mourning the loss of her tiny round globes as you skim your fingers over hard angled planes.

The serum left nothing untouched, you mourn silently.

You tug her further towards you, and she reluctantly moves until the head of her johnson is nearly touching your nose. Your own sex, still fully clothed in your briefs and trousers, remains unaffected. Oh well. Here goes nothing. You open your mouth.

“What are you doing, Bucky?!” You look up into her eyes. Okay, so the serum left one thing untouched.

“What does it look like I’m doing, Stevie?” You can hear the irritation in your own voice but you can’t stop it.

“It looks like you were about to put…your _mouth_ on it.” She looks dismayed, and a bit repulsed, and for a moment a sharp pang of sympathy for the discomfort she must be constantly feeling shoots through you before you remember that _she chose this_. Or not, not this. But the risk of it. The sympathy vanishes and the irritation returns in spades.

“Yeah. I was. I’m trying to make this work. Someone’s gotta.” That didn’t come out right. You sigh, take a breath and try again, looking back up at her from where your eyes fell. “I’m not gonna give you up without a fight. I have to know for sure, if I can do this or not. We both need to. I gotta find out. You gonna give me a chance?” You pause, willing to be as patient as she needs. She stares at you long and hard, then shudders, full body, and nods.

So that’s that. You take a deep breath.

You press your lips onto the head of her wood. You let them part as they slide over the bulge, until it’s seated in your mouth. You’re not immediately repulsed until you get the first taste of her. It’s acrid and acidic and so different from the taste of the soft folds she had before, that bready taste you’d long gotten used to loving. This is different. The back of your throat trembles.

You push her dick father into your mouth, trying to relax. She’s big, so freaking huge in your mouth that you must look comical trying to shove her in there at all. You wait, breathing through your nose. She keens low in the back of her throat, pecs flexing, nipples drawing tight, but she doesn’t move an inch.

Once you feel like you’re not going to gag and you’ve managed to get at least a few inches of her into your mouth, you try swirling your tongue around the length of it but the best you manage to do is kind of caress the underside. You start to panic. What if it’s not just that you find it repulsive—what if you’re also terrible at it? Because what’s the point of subjecting yourself to it if she doesn’t even enjoy it?

She’s done this for you. If she can do it for you, you can at least try for her.

You pull back a bit, eyes meeting hers, and do what she does when she wants to make you feel good. You start a slow rhythm, in and out. Her breath hitches, then quickens, but she doesn’t budge her hips even a little, not wanting to choke you. You try to ignore the feeling of her pubic hair scraping you, thicker and longer and darker than it was before. You try using your tongue again, pulling off her and swirling the tip of it around her dick head, teasing her slit. You shudder at the taste as some of it leaks out but you keep going.

She puts her hands in your hair, sliding through the short strands at the back in comfort, trying to soothe you. Even in this, trying to take care of you.

You hollow your cheeks and suck at her, hard, and she shudders, lifting a hand and shoving it into her mouth to stifle the moan. These tent walls are painfully thin.

You pick up speed, jaw starting to ache, wanting it to be over. You pump her hips back and forth a bit, trying to get her in deeper, trying to make it wetter. You’re starting to get covered in your own spit and that awful taste is starting to coat your tongue more and more. So you go faster, and relax your jaw. You grip her hips harder, encouraging her to move, and she starts to, hesitant and abortive.

She gasps and her dick tightens and you have a moment to think, _here it comes_ , before she moans your name brokenly and tries to pull out of your mouth completely. You pull off and seal your mouth around her dick head, flattening your tongue, and then...

…you feel it, hit the back of your mouth, and start to slide down, and your entire throat slams closed and you start to gag. But she’s filling up your mouth at this point and you choke, gasping for air, her juice getting all over your face and your boots and the ground as you spit and shudder and try desperately not to let the contents of your chow come back up. She starts apologizing immediately, flailing for a second as she casts about the tent for a rag or something to help you with. But you wave her off, gagging until you get your breath back and the flood of saliva washes out most her taste in your mouth.

There are tears in your eyes, but they’re tears of strain, not sadness.

Your johnson hasn’t twitched once.

“Bucky,” she says hesitantly, “are you okay?”

You take a deep shuddering breath, still trying to wave her off. “Fine,” you gasp out.

She looks at you with liquid eyes. “Want…want me to do you?”

You shake your head, wrapping your arms around yourself and trying to be very, very small.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurred to me that so far, this does not look like it's going to be a happy story. 
> 
> Well, it won't be. But it will have a happy ending. Because while Bucky may be a 1 on the Kinsey scale...the man he becomes after the Winter Soldier has his ways is not. 
> 
> I added some tags for period-typical misogyny and hurt/comfort. Also, be warned, it could get dub-con up in here once the Asset takes the stage. Because of Hydra; not because of him.


	4. Crash into you (crash into me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As we inch ever closer to that fateful train mission, Bucky struggles to come to terms with what the Army's done to his wife.

“See? I told you. They’re all idiots,” you sigh ruefully. You can’t help the fond smile.

She slides up next to you at the bar, pulling a stool between her legs and plopping down. “And what about you,” she mutters out of the side of her mouth. “You ready to follow _Captain America_ into the jaws of life?”

Your teeth clench and you grip your glass of beer harder. “Hell no.” She looks away, sighing. Fidgets.

“The hell do you want from me, Bucky.”

“My wife.”

“I was dying.” She looks up at you from her own mug. “I was dying. You were 2000 miles away, and all I wanted, all I hoped for, was to see you again. Once more. You think this is easy? Living in this body? It’s a constant creep. I feel. Wrong,” she finishes, clipping every word and glaring hard at you. You glare back just as hard.

“You killed my wife, Steve.”

“But I’m not gonna say sorry because at the end of the day, I would walk through hell, would face anything no matter how horrible—”

“Let me mourn her. You killed—“

“—If it was to keep you alive, so I’m not gonna apologize because this body let me save your life and—”

“—what we had, you took a decision that should have been mutual away from me,”

“ _Stop,_ ” she says forcefully, full effect of her glare weighing down on you. You almost shiver at the power behind the mask she’s wearing. Maybe this is who she’s always been inside. You don’t like it.

The tension drains from her, and she turns away. “Sorry,” she says grudgingly. “The body’s not the only thing the serum changed. My brain…the levels of testosterone…is this how you feel all the time?”

“Sometimes,” you grunt, looking down at your beer. She’s silent for a bit, folding her hands together in front of her.

“Do you want a divorce?” she asks, pointedly not looking at you.

“Yes. No. Fuck, I don’t know, Stevie.” You turn back to her, and it makes your heart hurt at how she’s all hunched over and miserable. “I fucking love you Steve. I don’t wanna spend a moment away from you. But I can’t give you want you need anymore. Physically. And you can’t give me what I need either. Maybe we should…”

“What.” She looks at you, guarded, tone utterly flat.

Your mouth doesn’t even want to form the words but you force them anyway. “Maybe we cool it off. Stop forcing it. Look…elsewhere.”

“I’m not gonna do that Buck,” she says angrily, angling her body around her beer and away from you. “Maybe you can, but I can’t. You're _it_ for me.”

“You sure?” you ask, eyebrow cocked? “That Agent Carter,” and you whistle low through your teeth. “She is a _looker._ ‘nd she’s got eyes for nothing but you.”

“’M not a kiki, Bucky. I’m straight.”

You chuckle darkly. “Not anymore.”

She slams her beer down on the bar, and turns back to you, eyes flashing. For an instant your eyes play tricks on you and you see Stella’s image overlaid with this one. They speak in stereo. “Listen you dumb punk and listen well. You gonna join my team or not? And think long and hard before you answer because despite your attempts to push me away I don’t trust your jerk ass to keep yourself alive long enough for us to get through this war and get the effects of this serum reversed. So suit up or shut up. C’mon,” and her tone turned a bit playful at this, a bit like the Stevie you once knew. “Don’t you wanna follow Captain America into battle? See what adventures we could have?”

You look down at your beer for a long time. Contemplate the foam head, the sweat on the glass. Think. “Nah,” you finally say, but you’ve got a small smile on your face. Maybe this will work. Maybe you can make it work. “But that little gal in Brooklyn too stupid to know when to quit?”

You look up at her, unable to help the adoration from coloring your eyes. “Guess I’d follow her anywhere.” And her shoulders slump with relief, eyes shining back at you, reflecting the love in yours.

Maybe you can make this work. Maybe.

 

It’s good for a while. You don’t touch each other, don’t kiss, don’t express affection like you used to, but you fight alongside each other, banter back and forth as easily as any of the other men. You miss your wife, but that’s nothing new; you felt that way before Steve showed up out of nowhere. You complete mission after mission, knocking out Hydra bases across Europe. Whenever you return from behind the wire, the other units are all atalk about your exploits, and you can’t help but relish the attention a bit.

You try to shove Steve at nurses and female agents, treat her like you would a buddy, distance yourself from her. You know it’s hurting her, but _you’re hurting too_ and the only way you can deal with what’s happened is to keep your space.

She lets you, and it’s awful.

Then she almost dies on an op when the explosives your support team has wired to take down an enemy munitions stronghold go off to early, with Steve still inside the damn building. You lose your mind at the sight of the compound go up in flames, rolling out from behind your sniper rifle and taking off at a dead run towards the building before you even realize you’ve moved.

The enemy is uncoordinated in their response, their chain of command broken, and they run in every direction trying to flee the flames, but a few of them do have the good sense to point their guns in your direction. Then you’re pulling out your pistol and shooting them dead with no real concentrated effort, more concerned with getting into that building and dragging Steve out.

_Dear God: don’t let me find her in pieces._

You jump a guard fence, dodge some falling debris, and slip inside the remains of the still-burning building, throwing an arm up over your face as you try to squint through the smoke and the remains. There.

She’s laying on her back, pinned by a beam, and you pick your way over to her, trying to move as fast as you can without dislodging anything else that could potentially crush her. When you reach her, you kneel down. She’s conscious but looking a little dazed. Thank God, thank fucking God.

“You’re pinned baby, hold on, I’m gonna try to move this off of you.” You try to lift the beam, but it won’t budge. Shit.

“I don’t think I’m strong enough, Steve, can you try to slide out? Are your legs broken?”

She shakes her head, and that’s when you realize how pale she looks. “I’m impaled on something,” she forces out.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, where Stevie, show me where.” She gestures weakly to her left side, so you rush around her, and that’s when you see a pair of rebar spikes sticking straight through her, on her left side, through her abdominal muscles. Her body is already trying to heal itself around them. “Okay, okay baby, I’m gonna try to life you off of these things, okay? ‘S gonna hurt, but I’m here.”

“Do it. I’ll be fine, I heal fast,” she whispers, looking at you trustingly, and you tug off your dog tags, pressing one between her teeth to bite down on. You take a moment to figure out the easiest way to do it without hurting her too much, and then kneel behind her head, sliding your arms under her back as far as they can go.

“On the count of three. One—“

And you heft her body up and off of the rebar, and jerk her to the side so that she doesn’t land on it again. She screams around your dogtags, then sits up and spits them out, gasping. “Help me get this off my legs.” Between the two of you, you’re able to get the beam moved to the side. You help her stand, then tug her hand. “C’mon, this whole place is about to crash down on our heads. Can you run?”

“Yeah,” she says, and her color and breathing is already improving. The pair of you take off out of the building. You hear crashing, falling sounds behind you, but you don’t look back.

Once you’re far enough into the wood line, you catch her by the arm, swing her around and press her against a tree. You kiss her, deeply, and she grabs your face and kisses back, nudging her way into your space as she licks into your mouth. You bite her lip, steady your hand on her good hip and rest the other over her pecs, stroking them. You only pull apart to gasp for air before diving back in, melting into her, chest to chest, pressed tight.

“Jesus, Steve,” you say once you’ve finally pulled apart, forehead pressed up into hers. “I thought. I thought.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” She pecks closed mouth kisses to your lips, exhaling deeply. She rubs a hand over the front of your trousers and, yep, you’re hard. You look up and she stares down into you with heat in her eyes. “Let’s regroup with our squad. Get back to camp. And to our tent.” And she presses your dog tags into your hand and takes off.

Just like that, you go soft again, relief replaced with apprehension. Your stomach starts churning. You just nod, and follow behind her, trying and failing to ignore the broad shoulders and masculine ass you trail behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I expect in the next chapter the POV will switch, as Bucky (you) is/are no longer there for Steve's reentry into society. So fair warning--it's intentional.


	5. I'd die for you (and even if you wanted me to)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fall, and...

The debrief gives you reprieve for a bit--you have to report to higher, and then you make Steve go get checked out at medical, even though she’s walking fine now and the puncture wounds have already healed into fading pink scars.

So before you know it, you find yourself back in your tent with her. You’re nervous as hell.

She takes you into her arms, and kisses you gently. You try not to be too put off by the day’s growth of stubble and kiss back, gently caressing her mouth with your tongue. But the height difference and the feeling of being enveloped in huge, strong arms is getting to you, so you pull back and start to tug off your tunic. She does the same, a slightly worried expression on her face. You try to give her a reassuring smile but you must not be convincing because her expression never wavers.

Once you’re both naked you lay back onto your cot, and she languidly crawls over you to lay skin to skin.

“I want to suck you, Bucky.”

“Okay.”

Your johnson is soft, laying lazily along your leg, but she teases it with her tongue, trying to get it to wake up. She licks at you softly, tongue darting out to tease your slit. You look down at her, but you’re bothered by the sight of broad shoulders, of the glimpses you’re getting of her dick as it swings, swollen between her legs. Of course she’s hard; why wouldn’t she be?

She can tell she’s not getting anywhere so she sits back and starts to stroke you with her hand. That’s even worse though, because she’s got all kinds of different gun calluses and even the spit she uses to try to cut through the friction doesn’t help the rough texture of her palms. You look away, and try to concentrate on just the sensations, but you’re just not feeling it.

“Your mouth,” you grunt out, refusing to meet her eyes, and in your peripheral vision you see her nod once and bend her head down again. You close your eyes, focusing entirely on the feel of her mouth, and your johnson stirs. She continues to lick, taking your softened dick into her mouth and rolling the mass of flesh around with her tongue. Her mouth hasn’t gotten much bigger, so that starts to work, and you firm up a bit until you hear the sound of flesh slapping flesh and your eyes open involuntarily.

She’s tugging at her wood with a clumsy, unpracticed hand. You go limp again. You contemplate for a few seconds on what to do as she noses around your dick, kissing your thighs. What she’s doing to herself looks like it hurts.

“Stevie, sit up for a bit.” She looks up at you, and you motion for her to sit up. “You got any slick?”

“There’s petroleum jelly in my kit. Would that work?” You nod.

“Yeah. ‘S gonna be hell to clean off later, but that’ll work. Go get it.” You sit up on one elbow, watching her backside as she turns and rummages through her gear. You decidedly ignore the sight of her stones pinched between her legs. She finds the tin and turns back, holding it out to you. You shake your head.

“Nah. Take some with your fingers, and use it to slick up the palm of your right hand.” She looks at you dubiously, but follows you instructions anyway. “’Kay, now make a fist like you’re picking up a basket.” She does. You make one too, then rotate it so that your thumb’s pointing up. You bring it down to your crotch then make the motion you want her to make, and she copies you, eyes fluttering closed and mouth dropping open as she lets out a tiny groan.

There’s something inexplicably hot about it, even as you’re simultaneously turned off. Teaching your wife how to touch her new body, stroke herself in a way that feels good; watching her enjoy it. Your meat stirs again, and you get excited. “Stevie! Stevie, suck me now.”

She opens her eyes a crack, peering at you through a lust haze and then shakes it off a bit as she follows your line of sight to your swelling wood. She bends over again, resting her weight on one hand as the other one continues to fist herself, and takes you back into her mouth. You close your eyes and let the sensations take you far away from what’s actually going on. As long as she doesn’t touch you too much…lay herself on you…press her body against you.

You instantly feel terrible for the though. This is the woman you love, hot for you, still desperately trying to please you even though you’ve been the worst clod imaginable. And you want her to suck you without even touching you? You’d rather have a meaningless suck job than make love to the woman you _married?_

Just like that, you lose your wood again, and she looks up at you knowingly, eyes filled with pain. You feel like even more of a shit.

“I’m sorry baby. It’s not, it’s not you. It’s just, your body. And then I started thinking of it against mine, and it bothered me, and then that bothered me even more, and it broke my concentration, and…

Her wood’s gone too now. She crawls off you, sits by you hip on the edge of the cot, hunched over. She presses the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. You’ve seen her do that a thousand times. She’s willing herself not to cry, praying for God to make her strong. Looking at her now, seeing her hurt, feeling your own hurt, you’re not sure there’s even a God to pray to anymore.

She takes a deep breath and raises her head to look at you. Her forehead is wrinkled in distress a bit, but her eyes are clear and her face is serious.

“Maybe we can use a sheet. I can pull it over my head, so you don’t have to see. I’ll try to touch your body as little as I can. We can get you there.” She looks at you, mouth set in determination. “I know I can get you there again.”

“Jeeze, Stella,” you say, suddenly exhausted. You sit up, slide your legs around her hips so that you’re spooning her from behind. You feel like the biggest asshole on the planet. You hug her from behind, and you can’t tuck her under your chin anymore like you used to, she’s too big now, so you lay a cheek to her back. She slides her hands down your arms and tangles your fingers with hers, pressing one against her heart.

You feel it beating. It’s strong, so strong. Stronger than it ever was before. She sighs bodily and you press yourself to her, rolling with the motion of her sighs. You try to chase away the regret in your head. Closing your eyes, you say “We’ll get there baby. Not like that, but we’ll get there.”

After the mission with the train you’ve got coming up. After that, you’ll try again.

* * *

 

“Remember the time I made you ride the Cyclone on Coney Island?”

“Yeah and I threw up?”

“This isn’t payback is it?”

“Now why would I do that?”

You sling your M1941 Johnson over your shoulder, and take a deep breath. You hitch your thumbs into your riggers belt, and try to wrap your head around the scope of what you and Steve are attempting to do.

“We were right; Dr. Zola’s on the train,” Private Jones reports from his post at the comms. “Hydra dispatch gave them permission to open up the throttle. Wherever he’s going they must need him bad.”

You look at Steve, who looks back at you. Your stomach plummets in your chest and a cold sweat breaks out over you despite the freezing temperatures of the Ardennes. Still though. You have your mission, and the mission must be accomplished. You nod once, and Steve dons her k-pot, turning away to ready herself for the zip line.

You have a very, _very_ bad feeling about this.

Turns out your fears around founded once you board the train, and despite going into hunter mode, weapon at the low ready, you fail to pay attention enough and the cabin doors slam shut, separating you from Steve. Your head swims with that surging, moment of panic feeling every time you let your wife go on an OP without you at her six, and the moment she hears the doors close she turns back, frantic, palms pressed to the glass window. You about-face, weapon high, and start engaging two targets behind you. You duck behind cover as you hear rounds go off in the next chamber over.

Then adrenalin kicks in and you go into fight mode.

You take out one of the targets immediately and flinch as the second one’s rounds make sparks against the metal door to your back. You re-adjust the grip on your rifle, and re-engage with a sustained fire on the second target, who’s already moving for cover. You shove your worry for Steve to the back of the mind and let it fuel you as you return fire to the remaining enemy.

The asshole is advancing, using munitions racks for cover, and you’ve expended the ammo on your rifle so you switch to your pistol, trying to conserve what rounds remain on your person. You aim and lay down suppressive fire as you transition from one side of the railcar to another, taking cover behind some ammo cans. But your mag only holds so many rounds, and you run out far too quickly. You drop the mag and try not to freak out, but then the door to your six slides open, and Steve’s there. She nods at you, holding up her M1911A1, then tosses it to you. You depress the safety and re-engage as Steve rushes in with a roar, shoving a munitions briefcase into the enemy and knocking him clean off his feat. He doesn’t get up.

“I had him on the ropes,” you say in a toneless, dazed voice.

“I know you did,” Steve reassures. Then you hear a high pitched whine and Steve shoves you out of the way.

“Get down,” she screams as she brings her shield up, right before some metalized monster shoots her and blows a hole through the side of the railcar. Steve’s knocked clean off her feat, disarmed, so you pick up her shield and start firing back at the thing.

_Not today you fucker._

Said fucker shoots you, and it hits the shield, which sends you flying back and out onto the twisted exposed metal of the railcar wall. In your panic, you reach out and manage to snag yourself on the safety bars, but you’re twisting in the wind and losing grip every other moment.

“BABY! HANG ON!” Steve steps out onto the ledge of the rail car, arm that's not clutching the safety bars stretched out to you, reaching. Her expression is pure, utter terror. “GRAB MY HAND,” she screams, but the rivets give on one side of the bar you’re hanging from. You reach out to her, but you know this is it—this is what that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach was, so you just—

\--study her face, memorizing the color of her eyes, the shape of her lips, the strand of her hair escaping from its cowl. You remember the woman she was. You love the man she’s become. And you mourn the life you could have had with her, would have celebrated, in any form, in any shape, with her.

Then you plummet, tumbling head over heel, sky and snow alternating your vision.  _I love you, Stella._

Then you don’t know anything but blackness for a long, long time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we've come. We're halfway through. Now the real challenge comes: writing The Asset, and trying to keep this fic accessible to everyone while still exploring hydratrashmeme type themes. Hmm.
> 
> The POV will switch from here on out. You will become Steve Rogers, but don't worry; I'll make the switch painfully obvious.
> 
> From the point of view of a soldier, I had fun writing the traincar scene. If anyone was curious, all the terminology used is the same you'd find in a debriefing report, ~~and Steve's officer pistol, the Colt M1911A1, is still in service and used by the U.S. Army even today. As an officer it's my primary weapon, and I have one issued to me through my unit, as well as a privately owned one I use to train up on so I can complete my yearly quals.~~ EDIT: drunk soldier fail. Officers are now issued a Beretta M9, which I would have remembered had I gone to my safe to look at. It shoots like shit, frankly. Terrible pistol. Do not buy. Go with a Glock, or a Sig.
> 
> Anyhoo. Thanks for sticking with me so far. Next up: back to the future, bb.


	6. Everybody here has seems and scars. (So what? Level up!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF MULTIPLE FAILED SUICIDE ATTEMPTS. I WILL TAG ACCORDINGLY. IF YOU ARE SOMEONE PRONE TO BE TRIGGERED BY ATTEMPTED SUICIDE, PLEASE SKIP THE PART TAGGED "TRIGGER WARNING". YOU CAN PICK BACK UP AFTER THE PART LABELED "END TRIGGER WARNING"
> 
> While from a literary standpoint, I hate breaking up the flow of my narrative to insert meta (and I hate it when other authors do it as well) we don't live in a perfect world, and I don't want to shock anyone into harming themselves. This fic is dark, but it doesn't need to needlessly set people over the edge. The summation of that part is that Steve attempts to take her life multiple times and fails every time. You have been warned. 
> 
> VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED.

After you put the plane down in the water, you don’t expect to wake up. You hope you don’t; you pray you die. You want to see Bucky again. His absence from your side is like a missing appendage. You can’t breathe.

 

 

You wake up.

You instantly know, something’s wrong. Your head is cloudy and your senses are dulled, but alarms are going off in your head, wailing _trap, trap, trap._

The sheet you’re laying on is soft, way softer than anything you had back home growing up and certainly more so than what you made do with in the Army. It also smells strongly of artificial fragrance. You hear a ballgame coming over the radio, but it’s false, a recording, because that was the ballgame Bucky proposed to you. You were there. You also feel, more than hear, a deep thrum running through the floors and walls. It feels like power being piped in from somewhere.

You open your eyes and sit up, swinging your legs to the floor. You glance around you. Everything in the room looks brand new, from the desk, to the bed, to the radio that’s currently on. Nothing has dings, fingerprints, or scratches from use on it. It looks it like was emplaced recently.

It looks like it was staged.

A woman enters into the room, dressed like a SRR agent, and again you’re hit with the overwhelming sense of _wrongwrongwrong_. You glace at her, head to toe. Hair. Lipstick. Bra. Shoes.

Nope.

No self-respecting female agent would wear her hair anything but pulled back out of her face and professional. No self-respecting female agent would wear that shade of lipstick, or a bra that fits that badly on her. Or those shoes, in a professional setting. This is false. Somebody has set up this elaborate ruse to pull the wool over your eyes. _Why?_

“Captain Rogers. How are you feeling?”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in a recovery room in New York, Captain Rogers.” Bullshit, you are. And that’s not your name.

“That’s not my name.”

“I’m sorry?” She looks genuinely puzzled, so you get up, and move to look out the window.

“That’s not my name. My name is Captain Barnes. Rogers is my maiden name.” You look over at her, and she stares back at you, mouth stuttering wordlessly.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she eventually admits. “You are, you’re Steven Grant Rogers, right?” Christ. Clearly you’ve been kidnapped by sub-par Hydra agents. Dandy.

“I haven’t been called Rogers since my wedding,” you gripe, as she shuffles through her papers. “And my name is Stella. Not Steven.”

The agent is saved by the presence of a sharply dressed, brown haired man stepping through the door and closing it quietly behind him.

“You’re dismissed, Agent. Hi,” he says, positively radiating affection in your direction. He holds out a hand and he looks harmless, so you take it, shaking. “My name is Agent Phil Coulson. You’re in a 50 story skyscraper in New York. It’s home to an organization called the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. Used to be called the Strategic Scientific Reserve. I believe you’re familiar.”

“Why’d you change the name?” you grunt, feeling more lost than you hope you’re letting on.

“Peggy Carter did. Once she took over. She really wanted the initials to spell out your shield. She was a fan. I’m a fan.”

You’re not convinced, even though you don’t doubt that this man finds you fascinating; you can see that at least, written in how he’s gazing at you. “Why do I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me?” The guilty stance he adopts only confirms it.

“Yes. Well. Um.” He waves his arms around a bit at the room you’re in, then gives up. “Maybe it’s best if I just show you. This way, please.” And he gestures to the door, and you see no option but to follow.

He leads you through the door, into a wide open atrium, and you look back. It _was_ a construct. The walls were paper thin, and the windows looked out onto what looks like giant screens. There are one way windows, port holes where people could peer in and watch you. You are instantly creeped the hell out.

There are people everywhere, dressed in suits and skirts cut into a fashion you don’t recognize. You take in every detail of _wrong_ as Coulson leads you down a wide hallway to a juncture where it turns left and there’s a big open window for you to gaze out. You stare out at the street below you.

“I don’t understand,” you say after a beat. “Where did you say we were again?”

“New York. Just…not the New York you remember.” He pauses. “You okay, Cap?

“I’m fine,” you whisper.

* * *

 

Apparently, after your plane went down, the Army rewrote your life. They released the results of the vitaray serum, tales of your exploits with the Howling Commandos, your daring rescue of Bucky Barnes, and your ultimate sacrifice to save the American people from almost certain destruction.

In this time period, you’re a war hero, and your story is taught in elementary school history classes. School children know your face, your life story.

“What would you like me to call you?” Coulson asks.

“I don’t know,” you shrug, looking down at your feet.

“Are you upset?”

“I don’t know,” you say.

You’re upset, though.

To school children, you were born Steven Grant Rogers, born sickly, and weak, and the childhood _best friend_ of Bucky Barnes, whom you followed into war after volunteering for the super soldier project. In that fictitious narrative, you were born a man, and you died a man.

You've been recast by historians in your own life. So, yeah. You’re upset.

“We have therapists. People who specialize in trauma. Would you like to talk to one?”

Nope.

“I’m fine.”

The war might have killed you, but the future killed the fight in you.

* * *

 

Two weeks after you’re ‘dethawed’ and Shield clears you to leave the building, you go see you sister-in-law, Rebecca. She’s impossibly old now, and you don’t even recognize her until she lifts herself out of her wheelchair and hugs you. You wrap your arms around her, dazed at how she fits into your embrace now. Before the war, she could easily beat you at arm wrestling.

Once you explain what has happened, you sit by her chair, and let her voice and face and gestures fill your senses. You’d loved Becca growing up, and she’d been one of your staunchest supporters when you and Bucky told her parents of your intention to marry. She’s also the only member of your family that didn’t stop writing once you informed them of what had happened after the serum.

You let her bubbly babble on at how great it is to see you, (“I know, I can’t believe it either. Trust me.”) answer her questions about how great you think the future is, (“Haven’t seen too much of it yet, frankly.”) and have you tried the food yet? (Yes, emphatically yes, it’s the only decent thing about this time. “It’s great. Not so sure about grocery stores these days, though.”)

After you run out of small talk she gives you a look that makes you feel naked and flayed to the bone. “But how are you really doing, love? How are you holding up?”

Your soul mate died a month ago. The sun in your sky has burned out. You’re hemorrhaging, unchecked. You want to die. “I’m fine”, you say, and the pitying look she gives you speaks volumes.

* * *

** TRIGGER WARNING **

Two months after Bucky dies, and one month after you wake up, you line up 400 extra strength Tylenol on the kitchen table of the pre-furnished apartment that Shield’s given you, plop down a gallon jug of water, and then methodically take every single pill on the table. You’re going to see Bucky.

It doesn’t work. You spend the next four hours puking into the once pristine toilet Shield owns, then pass out on the bathroom floor. Once you wake, you feel fine. Not even a headache.

You glace at the clock and see that it’s only 0345, so you have some time before you’re expected to be at your next therapy torture-session with the Shield shrink, so you strip down, climb into the tub, and crack open a safety razor. You slice down into your wrists as far as you can go, right along the vein, then fill the tub with hot water and bleed out, drifting. You’re going to see Bucky.

You come to in pitch red, freezing cold water two hours later. You feel weak and thirsty but your wrists have sealed up and now have two fading pink lines right down the middle of them. It’s 0545 and you have to get dressed to go to Shield HQ now.

The serum has stolen everything from you. Including your ability to die.

You drain the tub and get up. You wear a long sleeve shirt today and if your therapist notices she doesn’t make mention of it. You spend your hour and a half with her like you always do: silently glaring at her while she tentatively asks you questions.

Once your session with her has wrapped up and you’ve been dismissed, you go to find Agent Coulson. You feel like a shitty, terrible person for doing so because you know if he ever finds out he’s going to blame himself for your death, but if you manage it right, he’ll never even need know, so you find him, and you ask him.

“So I was wondering. I heard we switched from the 1911 to the Beretta M9? Think I could get issued one? Trying to get back into the swing of things. Thought I could take it down to the range, work out the kinks.”

 

You walk out of shield with a gun, a mag, 200 rounds of .9mm ammo, and a standing offer from Coulson to visit the range any time you need company.

You hop on your bike and drive as far out of the city as you can get. You find a fairly wooded area, and you hike in as far as you can. Then you take a deep breath, load the mag , and depress the safety. _You’re going to see Bucky dammit and fuck the rest of it that gets in the way._

Except when you put the gun to your head, you can’t pull the trigger. And when you put it in your mouth, you can’t pull the trigger. And when you lodge it upwards, under your chin, you can’t pull the trigger.

For all that your body may be male, you kill yourself like a woman would. You put the muzzle to your chest and pull the trigger.

* * *

** END TRIGGER WARNING **

 

_I’m coming, Buck._

_I’m coming._

_Hold on, Buck, I’m coming._

_Bucky! BUCKY HOLD ON!_

A train horn blares in the background and you open your eyes. Oh God, not this again. Then the pain slams into you and the machines you’re hooked up to go wild. You’re struggling to breathe again, taped up to a ventilator, tubes shoved down your throat and _everything hurts_. You look around frantically, searching for relief, and a hand comes out and pushes you gently back into your chair. It’s Agent Coulson and his eyes are liquid brown. He looks like he’s been crying for days, but he still speaks in the same, soothing tone he always uses.

Why does he always sound like he’s begging, even when he’s not? It infuriates you and you want to punch him in the face.

“Easy, Cap, easy. We need to keep the vents in. Try to relax and swallow around them and I’ll up your morphine.” He reaches across you to pick up a device with a red button on the top, and depresses it. Within a few seconds, your pain levels drop down below your threshold limit and you sink back into the bed, looking at Coulson with gratitude.

Once you formed the Howling Commandos, the Army took the time to teach you a bit of ASL, American Sign Language. Standard practice with spec ops units, and you wonder if that’s changed over the years.

U MAD? You sign to Coulson. His jaw hardens, confirming your theory.

FURIOUS, he signs back. “What the hell were you thinking? Wait,” and he closes his eyes in grief, looking away. “I know what you were thinking. You were thinking you’ve lost everything and you’re completely alone in this world. You’ve gone through unspeakable challenges in your life. You’ve got depression, which you have likely suffered through the majority of your life. And you have a touch of body dysmorphia too, I’d bet.”

You have no answer to that, so you just shrug. WHAT NOW? You sign.

“We put you on meds. Try to get you healed up, try to get you healthy again. You missed your heart by millimeters, didja know? You do know it’s not dead center in your chest, right? But you nailed your aorta, sooo. If it wasn’t for the serum, you’d be dead. Your hormone levels are all over the place. The doctors think it’s an effect of the serum. You female hormones are conflicting with you male ones, and it’s making a mess. Have you noticed higher levels of aggression than what’s normal for you?”

You nod.

“Thought so. Their first suggestion was to try to suppress the estrogen in your body. Then the testosterone would stop competing with it and you’ll hopefully be on more of an even keel. More,” and he hesitates, “more masculine than you were before. Up here,” and he taps his head. He looks at you.

“I’m sorry, that’s probably not what you want to hear. But it could help your mood swings. Could also help you…come to terms with what happened to you. Accept it and move forward.” He turns his whole body towards you, radiating earnestness. “You need help, Stella. Please talk to someone about what’s devastating you. You’re not fine.”

You reach up and slowly pull the respirator out of your mouth, gagging as the tubes drag against the back of your throat. You place it to the side and take a shuddering breath.

“That’s not my name.”


	7. Better this time, I will be better this time. (Blame it on the hormones)(Don't blame it on me, yeah)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stella--I mean, Steve--comes to terms with his life as it is now, and the people in his life are surprisingly okay with that.

Waking up from your final suicide attempt wakes up in you the fight to live, as well. Not always, and it’s a slow process, but you start to get better. You start to heal.

Shield’s there to “help". They watch you very, very carefully and for the first few weeks, barely let you out of their sights. They try to throw therapists at you as well but you’re still trying to decide what you want to say yourself, so nobody sticks. One thing they offer that actually does help is to give you drugs. They start experimenting with medication that you reluctantly take, because _you kind of_ _would_ like to start feeling like the color hasn’t be sucked out of your world, and frankly, you’re curious to see if _anything_ can overwhelm your metabolism long enough to affect change.

The Shield scientists manage to find a cocktail of meds that actually works, and you start to feel better. You also start to notice a change in yourself, in how you think and feel and react to situations. You feel more at ease in your new body. You can look in the mirror without being shocked, most mornings. You might be starting to come to terms with what’s happened to you.

One day you ask to borrow a laptop from the agent that’s been assigned to your suicide watch, and bring up the browser. You google the term Coulson brought up, ‘body dysmorphia’. That leads other terms—transgendered, cisgendered, gender binary, gender fluid. You didn’t know there were words for it. You find yourself sympathizing with the pre-transition individuals the most—feeling wrong in your own body is a terrible, helpless feeling that makes you want to peel your own skin off, and you’ve spent a lot of time feeling like that over the last year.

But you’re getting better, and you decide that maybe, just maybe you can accept and move on from the fact that you were accidentally, involuntarily given a sex change, and it cost you your marriage. It was hard. It was ugly. But it happened and there’s nothing you can do to the change the past, and if Bucky had had any love left for you in his heart  by the time he died, he would have been appalled at your attempts to take your life.

You chose to go through the vitaray procedure knowing you could die. You didn’t die, however, and you’re healthy and whole, and your new body has allowed you the chance to do amazing things for your country and for your men and for yourself, and the future has given you a chance to start over.

It takes a long time for your gunshot wound to heal fully—longer than you would have anticipated. But the day the pink scar fades completely, you’ve realized something.

Stella Barnes is dead. But maybe you can be Steve Rogers, instead.

 “I’m ready to talk to a therapist,” you say one night over dinner with Coulson at the Shield cafeteria. He looks up at you from where he's hunched over his chow mein. He looks pleased. You knew he would be. He wipes his mouth was a napkin, nodding.

“Sure. That’s good. Absolutely. We have ones that specialize in PTSD, if you want, or grief counseling, or—“

“Do you have any that specialize in gender identity issues? Or transgender issues?”

He pauses a bit. Thinks. “If we don’t? We’ll hire one.”

* * *

Once you’ve finally convinced Shield that you’re not going to make any more attempts to hurt yourself, they start allowing you greater access to their facilities and the outside world. You join a support group for trans individuals, and you go to meetings twice a week. You don’t really talk, because your situation is so different from theirs, but it feels good to listen, and their stories of overcoming sadness, anger, depression, and confusion in order to finally find peace and acceptance give you hope. You also hire a trans coach with some of your sizable military back-pay who teaches you techniques to pass. How to walk like a man, sit, stand, speak—that kind of thing. It pays off. You consider it a worthwhile investment.

Pretty soon you’re able to refer to yourself with masculine pronouns. You start with spoken ones first, because your mind takes a little more convincing than your tongue does, but you get used to it in less time than you thought it'd take.

You re-label yourself too. Labels are important to you because they allow you to set some constraints and controls on yourself in a world where you feel like almost everything is out of your control. You’re a man. Male. A gay male, actually, because while your preferences never changed, the term for them did.

You also start working a bit. Doing a bit of art. Training a bit, too, which is nice. Director Fury gives you the quick reaction force—in this organization, called Strike—a group of dedicated, serious men that feel a little like the Howling Commandos, but different.

None of them seem to about know your past, but you grow close to your second in command, Brock Rumlow, who reminds you a bit of Bucky—same intensity, though he has none of Bucky’s warmth or sense of humor—and one night after a long spar in the gym with the man you tell him about yourself, your past, your initial reaction to the hack job Army historians have done with your life. It doesn't help that Rumlow's cute like Bucky in a dark, smouldering, 5 o'clock shadow kind of way, and you feel bad "cheating" on Bucky by even acknowledging your attraction to him.

Rumlow takes the news of your transition with a shrug and a half smile and never treats you any different, and you’re grateful to have someone like him in your life. Someone loyal, someone you can trust.

* * *

 

On the 1st of May, you file the paperwork to officially have your name changed from Stella Barnes to Steve Rogers. It’s time. Bucky’s gone and that life is behind you and while you don’t regret it or want to forget it, you’re ready to close the door on that chapter of your life and start a new one. So you bite the bullet and you hand the paperwork over to Coulson to expedite and he gives you a long once over but thankfully, doesn’t say anything. And that’s it.

Three days later, the battle of New York begins.

Idiots. “You shoulda left it in the ocean, where you found it.”

* * *

Tony Stark knows.

Of course he knows, he’s Howard Stark’s son and for all that he’s apparently a hero who’s willing to die to save the citizens of New York, he’s also kind of a dick and he knows that none of the other Avengers know your past. Which is why, since he never passes up the opportunity to show off his superior intellect, he turns to you, during your group bonding, after battle falafel party, and says, “You know there’s corrective surgery these days to fix your gender right? Fake boobs, turn the outie into an inny if you know what I mean?”

Bucky once called you a barely repressed ball of unfathomable sarcastic depth, so it takes every ounce of self-control you have to respond in an objective, level-headed way. “I do. But look at me Stark. Do you really think there’s enough surgery on the planet that would make me look like a woman again? Besides,” you continue, wiping your mouth with a napkin, “who knows if it would even work? I heal pretty fast. My body could refuse the implants; I could theoretically regrow anything that’s, erm, cut off. We have no idea.

“’Sides. I’ve come to terms with it. Took a while, but I got there. This was the hand I was dealt, and I intend to play through the round with it.” And you take another bite of your gyro and let the grease and the calories go to work on your tired brain. You think about ordering another one.

“I’m lost,” Barton admits.

“Oh yeah, I guess you wouldn’t have the security clearance for that, would you Katness? Capsicle over here wasn’t born a man. He used to be Stella not Steve. It pays to have a lover who’s also the world’s smartest Artificial Intelligence. J.A.R.V.I.S. is a wiz at hacking himself into servers he has no business being in. Amazing, the things you find out,” and he shoots Romanoff a knowing look that she pointedly ignores in order to stare at you, fascinated. You look around the table at the stunned faces, rub the back of your neck, and shrug.

And that’s how the Avengers find out. None of them treat you any differently either, except for Romanoff who seems to consider you a sister at arms and insists on taking you shopping and discussing women’s rights issues with you.

You suppose you don’t mind that too much. And looking back you’re grateful for Tony too, because as soon as your team wraps their heads around your involuntary sex change, the topic quickly turns, as you suspected Tony planned, to his revelation that he’s in an intimate, adult relationship with _his computer._

You’re all a little strange, and that’s okay too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, so far I've been flying solo without my beta reader who is very busy indeed. Well, suffice it to say she is none too thrilled with the quality of this fic, and is ripping it to shreds on the back end. Which is fine; I don't pay her in Starbucks giftcards to tenderly kiss me on the mouth and tell me I'm a special little petunia. But once this fic is finished, it will likely go through a lengthy editing for quality and clarity. It won't get changed, content wise, because surprisingly she's okay with the content, but it will get cleaned up a bit.
> 
> That said, don't nobody tell her, but I'm kind of posting this chapter without her, erm, seeing it. And we're both very busy people, and I want to keep with the schedule of posting a chapter every day or every other day. I want to get this baby knocked out by the end of the week, say. Or the beginning of next week. I need this fic out of my system so I can work on other things. 
> 
> SO: if you see a glaring error, or something that bugs you, or even a word left out or a comma in the middle of a whateverthefuckidontcareaslongasitlookswrongtoyou, point it out and I will edit as I go. As much as I hate crowd sourcing my betas, I see no other option at this point. My unit's getting ready for deployment and I got shit to do, bitches. And also, I've been neglecting my own fanfic reading habits to devote most of my time to writing this thing, which is fine, and good, and lovely, but I am going through withdrawals a bit because, let's face it, we're talking about a 200,000 a word a day habit. Soooooo, yeah. 
> 
> Hunting season's open, gals.
> 
> *queue JARVIS voice* I think I need to sleep now, sir. Zzzzz...


	8. I wish that I could be like the [sane] kids cuz all the [sane] kids, they seem to fit in.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky Bucky Bucky...will you ever be healthy again? (Yes, you will. Steve's set his mind to it.)
> 
> “You didn’t go for men, before. The fall, I mean.”  
> He shoots you a confused look. “You sure? Doesn’t bother me now.”  
> “Yeah. Well,” you admit reluctantly. “It did before, trust me.”

You’re going to punch Brock Rumlow in the face.

You’re not sure about much these days, but you are certain about that. You’re going to punch him in the face, and then you’re going to go find your husband and desperately try to get him the help he needs.

It turns out, you don’t get your first wish, because Rumlow lives through the fire that takes the Triskelion, but ends up covered in third degree burns from head to toe. Fine. You’ll beat him soundly once he heals.

But it starts to look like you’re not even going to get your second wish, when after months and months of searching, you’re no closer to success than when you started. Sam is always at your six and Natasha sends you what leads and info she can gather while at the same time trying to complete her own missions, but no tips end up bearing fruit. You’re incredibly grateful to Sam, who essentially leaves his own stable, collected existence behind in order to help you, but you eventually send him back so he can move on with his life as you continue your unsuccessful search.

“Don’t try to force him to remember,” he advises, as you stand on the tarmac, a Stark Jet waiting to ferry him back to D.C. “He’ll need to remember on his own. If you tell him too much, about himself, about your past, he might not get those memories back. The brain’s a funny thing. And be prepared for the possibility that he might _never_ get his memory back. If he doesn’t…”

“We’ll make new ones,” you respond with determination. It sounds like a cliché on your tongue, but it’s the truth.

* * *

 

In the end, you don’t find Bucky, he finds you. It should have been painfully obvious to you, in retrospect, that that was how it was going to end. Bucky’s always been as bullheaded as you are, and now he’s got the tactical knowledge of the world’s best spy organization shoved into his head, with the skillsets to match. You were never gonna find him until he wanted to be found.

In a hotel room in Prague, you wake to find him standing over your bed. He’s silently menacing, wearing filthy tattered clothes and a baseball cap that’s seen better days. His hair is in his face, long and matted. He glowers down at you silently but the effect is negated by the fact that he’s pale as ice, and the circles under his eyes are so dark they’re purple. He looks exhausted.

He’s unarmed though.

You try to remain as calm and still as you can, though your heart is pounding with excitement, so loudly that he can probably hear it from where he stands.

“Bucky,” you whisper.

“Why are you following me?” he grates. Your heart clenches.

“To bring you home. I want you to come back with me.”

“Weapons don’t have homes.”

“You’re not a weapon, Buck. You’re a person.”

He shakes his head. “Weapons don’t have homes. Or people that follow them all over the world.”

“Case in point then. Can I sit up?” You slowly draw yourself upright until you’re seated against the headboard. “Would you like to sit down?” Bucky doesn’t move.

“You were my mission,” he says, as he draws a weapon from the waistband at the small of his back. It’s the gun he was using earlier. He holds it at his side but doesn’t point it at you. “You were my mission. But. The museum. And, I remember you. I remember fighting with you. Beside you,” he corrects.

You nod. “We fought in the war together.”

“You were my handler.”

“I was your commanding officer, Bucky,” you correct, and he gives you a confused, lost expression for a moment before his face shifts back to blank. “And your friend. Your best friend. We’ve known each other since childhood.”

“Weapons don’t have childhoods,” he says. He raises the gun and points it off to the side of you, then drops the mag and clears the round in the chamber, catching it with his flesh hand. He tosses the weapon and the bullet to the bed, on top of the mag. “I have to regenerate. I’m not functioning within optimal parameters.”

“Sleep then. Here,” and you draw the covers back, but he’s already gone to lay on the floor by your feet. “Bucky, we can share the bed, or you can just take it…don’t sleep on the floor.”

But his breathing is already evening out and you can see the argument will get you nowhere. Again, he’s exhausted. Probably starving, too.

At least it’s a start.

* * *

If you’d thought having to work through your depression and gender issues has been a slow process, working through Bucky’s demons is glacial. You don’t care, however, because you’re so relieved to have him back in your life. You’ve been given a second chance and you’re not going to mess it up.

The amount of damage Hydra’s done to him is astronomical. After Natasha dumped Shield’s files onto the internet, you had intentionally avoided anything about the Winter Soldier project, because you’d needed to keep your mind clear, and flying into a rage wasn’t going to help find Bucky any quicker. But with him here, now, in the flesh, you force aside your reluctance and go to Google. You need to know what you’re dealing with.

You ultimately wish you hadn’t. You learn more than you ever wanted. About how he has primary protocols, for which he has more blood on his hands than you’ll ever be able to relate. How he has secondary protocols which entail for him to essentially be used as a passive sex doll. Or sometimes, a not so passive sex doll. How for him, intimacy and abuse have become uncleavably intertwined with each other. How Hydra burned into his brain to make him forget you, and how it has almost worked. You’ll kill them all if you get the chance. Screw justice. They hurt your husband, probably permanently. That’s unforgivable. You’ll kill them all.

For a long time, Bucky doesn’t even show signs of being aware that he is entitled to personhood. He refers to himself as tool, or weapon, or asset, or soldier. He seems to perceive himself as agendered, and has no concept that he’s a human being that has the right to wants, desires, or choices. He refers to himself as “it” when pressed to talk about himself at all, and he speaks of who he used to be before he was captured as “him” or “Bucky” or “James”, like a separate person.

It takes him hours to make the simplest decisions. Some days, he only ever responds to direct commands, so that’s what you make do with.

But slowly, oh so slowly, he makes progress over the months. He regains his memories, bit by bit, slowly. Becomes more aware of himself, of his desires. Of the fact that he has the ability to want things, and that he has the right to ask for them. Because he’s a human being with free will and choice, and not just a weapon or a warm wet hole. You’re as patient as you need to be. Because, in the end? You’ll never get over the fact that even brainwashed, even having no idea who the hell you were or what you meant to each other—when _you_ were the one falling, he jumped in after you.

* * *

“I had a wife”, he says to you out of the blue one afternoon as you sit trying to coax him to eat his lunch. You try not to show any outward reaction. He’s been revealing more and more memories to you over the months, and you always try to react without any bias that could irritate or influence him.

“Yeah, you did”, you reply softly in what you hope is a neutral tone. He studies you for a moment over his pork chops. “Do you remember her name?” you ask, unable to keep a little bit of hope from leaking into your voice.

He shakes his head. “No.”

“How about what she looked like?”

He hesitates. “Bit like you. Blond. Pale. Blue eyes. Guess I have a type,” he says, with a small, self-deprecating smile. It’s the closest you’ve seen to him self-identifying in days, so you let it go without chastisement.

“What do you mean, Buck?”

He looks down at his food, refusing to make eye contact. “When the uh. Drugs, cleared out. It woke up.” He stares down at his crotch. You’ve noticed that, actually. He’s tried to hide it, a little, but Bucky has no sense of modesty anymore, not after what he’s had done to him. You can hear him, sometimes, masturbating in the next room over, door open. You’re surprised he remembers how to do so. You suspect he’s probably surprised, too.

“Kept thinking about you. Didn’t mean to, but.”

And the surprises keep coming. You have to be honest though. “You didn’t go for men, before. The fall, I mean.”

He shoots you a confused look. “You sure? Doesn’t bother me now.”

“Yeah. Well,” you admit reluctantly. “It did before, trust me.”

The confused look persists for a bit. “They had me do things, though. Sometimes. During missions. Sometimes outside of missions, too. Didn’t bother me none.”

You suppress your fury, because you know that too, and there’s no point in taking it out on Bucky. The documents released from Shield said as much. Your husband had been passed around like a party favor at Hydra gatherings.  You try not to feel resentful at Bucky for stepping out on your marriage, and you almost succeed when you remind yourself that it’s not his damn fault. “Yeah Buck. But that wasn’t under your control. You never gave permission for that.”

“I know,” he argues. “But it didn’t bother me none, either. At least I think. I mean, being used—that bothers me. But not. Not the gender thing.

“‘M not the man I was, Stevie. I’m like…like the asset. But overlaid with the man you knew. I’m different now. I’m a different man.” He pauses now, gives you a long, hard stare. “I hope you can accept that.”

You’re damn sure going to try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short one. Sorry.
> 
> Um, I am a fandom nobody who has been reading/writing fandom for 20 years, since I was 7. I have no one to meta or flail out with. If you wanna be fandoms friends, here's my tumblr. After 20 years I am tired of hiding in the closet, and I don't spam. Would love someone to talk shop with.  
> http://just-tea-thanks.tumblr.com/


	9. The do-over. (Say yes, say yes, cuz I need to know.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Gimme your ring.”
> 
> “What?” you ask, caught off guard.
> 
> “Your ring,” he repeats. “You used to carry it on your dog tags, right? You still wear them. I can see the chain poking out of your uniform. Hand it over. Please.”
> 
> “But it's my ring. You gave it to me,” you plead. Just like that, your heart has sunk so far down in your body that it feels like it’s trying to dig a hole through the pavement.
> 
> He shakes his head. “I gave it to Stella Rogers,” he corrects.

“Who the fuck, fucking genetically modifies turtles? Why is that even something someone would do?”

You’re on a cleared out street in New York, running through a bunch of smashed up cars, busy calculating angles in your head because contrary to what twitter thinks, your shield does not come back to you with magnets and you have to let your world reduce to lines and formulas in the heat of battle for you to fight the way you do.

But you do spare a glace back at Bucky, who’s got pistols out and is covering your six as you send the shield careening into the neck of a foam drooling, twelve foot tall, fanged turtle with claws. And spikes? The hell?

You sympathize with Bucky’s bewilderment.

“Dunno. I think it has something to do with a television show? Or a movie? I swear I’ve heard of this before.” You duck to dodge the fender of a car one of them throws at you, as Bucky smoothly rolls out of the way and comes back up to the high ready on one knee, emptying a mag into the creature. You take a moment, as you leap onto the back of one of the monsters and brain it with your shield, to appreciate the ascetic of how Bucky fights now.

He’s magnificent.

He was always an efficient, economical fighter before—he conserved movement and he never failed to land a shot. Now he moves like water, flowing gracefully from one position to another, engaging in hand to hand combat that looks like he’d dancing more than fighting with knives.

It makes your dick firm up in your uniform and you force yourself to focus on the battle.

You throw your shield through the abdomen of one of the remaining targets as he puts the last one down with two clean holes in what you both assume to be where it keeps its brains. He turns to you, a bit out of breath but grinning from ear to ear, and it hits you all at once, almost sends you to your knees with the force of it.

You’re so overwhelmingly grateful. And relieved. And elated. You never in your wildest dreams hoped that you would have this again—Bucky, here, alive, fighting beside you like he’d never been torn from you in the first place. Your heart swells up in your chest so big you’re sure it’s going to burst.

How did you get so lucky? What did you do, to be granted this gift?

Bucky’s smile dies slowly and his face turns pensive. He hesitates for a moment, before speaking.

“Gimme your ring.”

“What?” you ask, caught off guard.

“Your ring,” he repeats. “You used to carry it on your dog tags, right? You still wear them. I can see the chain poking out of your uniform. Hand it over. Please.”

“But it's my ring. You gave it to me,” you plead. Just like that, your heart has sunk so far down in your body that it feels like it’s trying to dig a hole through the pavement.

He shakes his head. “I gave it to _Stella Rogers,_ ” he corrects. “But you don’t go by that no more, right? You go by Steve. Barton told me you’d changed your name and everything.”

“Yeah, but Buck.”

He holds out his hand, gives you a “gimme” motion with his metal fingers. Feeling sick to your stomach, you tug the chain free enough from your constricting neckline to duck your head out from under it. You hand him the chain with numb fingers.

He takes it, and deftly unhooks the longer piece, sliding the ring off and holding it up between two fingers. He studies it for a minute, nods once, then slides it into his pocket. Then he looks up at you and smiles, pats you lightly on your bicep. He hands back your dog tags, and you take them, stunned.

“C’mon, you jerk, let’s get out of here and over to the extraction point. And after the debrief, you can take me out for sushi! Been dying to try it in this time period, see if they haven’t screwed it up too bad.” He starts to take off at a light jog, and you stand there for a second while your brain catches up.

“Sure. Whatever you want, pal,” you choke out. You hope you don’t sound too gutted.

If you do, he doesn’t notice.

* * *

 

“And that’s it? You didn’t ask him why?” You can hear the outrage in Sam's voice as he flips over a two of clubs and you flip a jack of spades. You sweep the two cards into your pile.

“I think the why was obvious, Sam. Didn’t need much clarification on the point he was trying to make."

Sam does a half shrug, throws down a king of spades; you throw a queen of diamonds. You curse lightly as he sweeps the cards into his pile, and he smiles a bit.

“And nothing’s changed? He hasn’t, I don’t know, stopped spending time with you? Or started giving you the blow off?”

You shake your head. “If anything, it’s the opposite. We do everything together. Movies, games, restaurants, bars, on occasion. It’s like he’s trying to make up for lost time. I mean, sure, he has his bad days sometimes,” you flip another card, “but that’s to be expected. Even when he’s feeling more like the asset than Bucky, he usually just sits near wherever I am, quietly, and stares off into space. He eats the meals I cook. He goes on missions with me.”

You look up at Sam, who studies you patiently. “If he doesn’t want to be with me anymore, he’s given me no sign of it. Aside from taking his ring back,” you point out bitterly.

“Have you slept together? Since we got him deprogrammed?”

You blush, always a bit uncomfortable with this generation’s causal attitude towards discussing sex, and shake your head. “No. I haven’t wanted to try, to push him into anything. They. They did a number on him, Sam.” You sigh. “And even before that, before the fall, he. He wasn’t coping well. With the changes I’d gone through. I’d try to get something started, but, he couldn’t ever get his head around it.

“It’d make him sick, frankly. And then he’d feel guilty about it, which is worse.”

Sam interrupted you. “But I remember Romanoff saying he’d done it with guys before. During his Winter Soldier days.”

You make a face at him. “Yeah, and thanks for the reminder of that.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine," you sigh, "it’s just…that was out of his control. He was made to do those things. The decision was never his to make; he couldn’t consent to it. And yeah, he told me once that it didn’t bother him, but that was months ago, and he was still recovering from his programming back then. Now that his head’s on straight, he’s probably realized that there’s a difference between broadening your sexuality because you're in love, because you choose to, and being forced to do so through fear and programming. And who could blame him for that?”

Sam nods. “I agree. And I know you’re trying to look out for his best interests. But he’s not the only one in this relationship, Steve. You are too. And your needs have to be met too. You’re still married, right?”

“I don’t know.” Sam gives you an incredulous look.

“I’d find that out if it was me. And I’d try getting something started with him, bedroom-wise. I mean, obviously, be careful he doesn’t slip into asset mode. Don't push him into something he's not ready for, or can't handle. Not that I need to tell you that. But just trust him enough to try. Worst he can say is ‘no’.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of."

"Yeah. Well. If you never take a chance you'll never know."

You flip over a 6 of hearts, and he flips over a 6 of clubs. "War," he declares, and you begin mechanically laying down cards. He wins the round with the queen of hearts, and you think you might hate this game, a little.

* * *

 

A few nights later, you’re sitting in front of Stark’s giant television watching the news, Bucky’s head in your lap as you card your fingers through his hair. He’s not paying any attention to the program, eyes closed, and you’re not really paying attention to it either, lost in thought.

What passes for "news" these days is a joke, anyway.

Bucky’s got his feet propped up on the armrest of the couch, taking up most of the space, but you don’t mind. During the war, moments like these were few and far between, so you relish the peace and quiet.

Still though. The uncertainty you’ve carried around since Bucky gave himself up into your custody a year ago eats at you, so you screw up your courage.  _Now or never._

“Hey Buck?”

“Yeah Stevie?” And he cranes his neck up a bit to look at you. You bend your neck down to meet his face and press your lips to his, softly.

You just hold them there for a moment, waiting to see if he’ll jerk back or push you off, but after a few breaths, he deepens the kiss, pushing up a bit to press his lips further into yours, and parting them slightly with his own. His arm comes up to curl around the back of your head as you deepen the kiss further, tracing the seam of his mouth with your tongue. He parts his lips and you curl your tongue into his, caressing his mouth, in and out. He exhales deeply through his nose, and starts to rotate his entire body around, serpentine, so he can straddle your hips without ever breaking contact with your mouth. He runs his fingers through your hair before gripping the back of your skull.

You can feel him through his jeans. He’s thick and hard in a way you haven’t felt for over 70 years. You start to roll your hips up into him and he grinds himself on your own hardness, bearing down into the kiss and mimicking the rhythm of his hips with his tongue. You groan, and yank him closer, sliding a hand down to grab his ass and he wraps his other arm around your shoulders and sinks into you.

You kneed his ass for a bit, massaging it with your fingers before tracing your hand along the waistline of his jeans. Sliding a hand up his shirt you roll your fingers around his left nipple, pinching and twisting in a way you know he used to love. He pulls out of the kiss, groaning your name, and you slide your hand down to his fly, flicking the button open.

“I’m torn between letting you finish while I watch, and telling you to take a hike.”

You spring apart, gasping, and you crane your neck around to address the speaker. It’s Tony. His face is a bit flushed and he has to adjust himself in his dress pants. He pulls at his tie and clears his throat, looking up at Jarvis's nearest camera with a guilty look.

“Stark,” Bucky growls, letting the Winter Soldier peek out from underneath his icy stare.

“Hey, it’s _my_ house,” Stark bitches back, “And you can’t blame a guy. I’m a tiny bit completely raging bisexual and you’re both hot as hell. But that’s my couch. And I want to watch Myth Busters.”

You sigh, and push Bucky gently so that he stands. “Sorry, Tony.”

“It’s fine. Just. Take it to your floor. You know, the one with the reinforced beds?” But the mood’s been broken now, so Bucky just gives you a small smile and flops back down beside you on the couch, propping his boots up on Tony's $20,000 coffee table.

“Nah, we’ll stay,” he says. “I like that show.”

He takes your hand as Tony plants himself on your other side. You trace the metal plates of his fingers.

At least it’s a start.

* * *

 

You’re finishing your post-mission paperwork when Bucky walks into your office, grim expression, holding a manila folder. He stops in front of your desk, eyes dark and intense.

“Sign these,” Bucky commands. He drops the folder in front of you, and you flip it open, wondering what you’ll find.

It’s divorce papers.

You look back up at Bucky in betrayal, but he just nudges the folder closer to you with one finger, gaze never leaving yours.

“Bucky, I don’t understand. You…you want to get divorced?”

He nods. “It’s pretty common these days, right? Much more common than when we were coming up.” He drops a pen down onto the papers.

“But I’m your wife, Bucky. I love you, more than anyone else in the world. Please. Can’t we just work this out? Please? I thought we were doing better.”

“You’re not my wife, anymore. You’re not the woman I married, Steve. I married Stella Rogers.”

“This was the hand I was dealt with, Bucky.” He nods.

“I know. And this is how I’m dealing with it. Sign the papers please.”

Anguish fills you, but oddly enough, a little bit of relief, too. This is the thing you’ve been dreading. The thing you’re sure is going to kill you, and possibly, the hardest thing you’ll ever have to go through, aside from losing Bucky the first time. But at least it’s done, it’s over with, and the specter of the threat of it won’t loom over your head anymore. You take a deep breath, and sign the papers.

“You coulda given me some warning, Buck," you say with a scowl. You toss the pen back on top of the papers. "This took me by complete surprise.”

“I took my ring back. That was your warning.”

“Fine. Can we at least be friends?” You know you’re pleading, but you can’t help it. You need Bucky in your life; you’ll take him any way you can.

He bobs his head sideways in the odd little Russian nod he does now. “I hope so. Got any questions for me?”

You shake your head, numb.

“’Kay, ‘cuz I got one for you.” And he drops to one knee in front of your desk. He pulls out a velvet box and pops the top open. In it sits…not your ring, but the stone from it, set into a heavy, men’s wedding ring.

Bucky’s grinning at you now.

“Steven Grant Rogers...“

“Oh you have got to be kidding me, Buck!”

“Will you take this ring—“

“I can’t believe you right now, I outta sock you in the jaw!”

“—this much more appropriately sized ring—“

“I outta say no, is what I outta do.”

“—and be my blushing, buff-bodied, bull-headed, punk of a groom?”

“You’re going to regret this,” you smile.

“Nah.” And he leans in for a kiss as he slides the ring on your finger.

“You’re not the woman I married, Steve, but I’m not the man you married either. We’ve both changed. But we’ve been given a do-over. Let’s do this thing right."

 

_Yes._

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so that's it. I'm grateful for stoatsandwich for coming up with this plot bunny that bit me so hard I wrote 20,000 words, during finals, in a week and a half for it. I'd like to thank all of the kudos and comments of encouragement along the way, and the fandom friends I've made; that's a delight! You guys are awesome.
> 
> I've divorced the smutty epilogue out of the fic itself because I didn't want to shoehorn it in if I end up not being able to make it work, but as of now, I do plan on writing a honeymoon followup with sex scenes I write that don't (intentionally) suck like the ones I crafted for this fic. I'll be a follow on, series style. So, as we say in the Army, stand by to stand by. 
> 
> In a few months, once I've gotten some distance from this fic, I'll also do an edit for clarity. Not content, just cleaning it up a bit. So if it's the kind of fic you think you'll return to, you might see some minor changes in the future.
> 
> Once again, thanks everyone! Keep fighting the good fight!


End file.
